


Overcast

by ReverberatingEchoes



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fidelity and Waiting, Friendship/Love, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspective Watanuki Kimihiro, Longing, Love in its Different Forms, Sad Watanuki Noises, Set During xxxHolic Rou Adayume, Shopkeeper Watanuki, Spoilers, Watanuki Kimihiro-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:09:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22495129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReverberatingEchoes/pseuds/ReverberatingEchoes
Summary: It’s all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping.It’s just that sometimes, sometimes he wishes he knew what to do to ease the unending longing in his heart.OrYuuko is gone. Kimihiro is learning to live a life without her.
Relationships: Ichihara Yuuko/Watanuki Kimihiro
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Overcast

**Author's Note:**

> This fic would not have come to life without the love and support and proofreading skills of my beloved beta-reader, StrawberryDaifuku. Thank you for listening to my rambling, fixing my grammar and tenses, and for giving me kind comments. I love you dear!
> 
> P.S. The Sad Watanuki Noises tag was my witty beta reader's idea. We spent a good five minutes laugh-crying over it. 
> 
> \--
> 
> I've always found xxxHolic to be a beautifully bittersweet tale and it definitely left a lasting impression on me. This fic is my love letter to xxxHolic; to its story, its characters and their bonds with each other.
> 
> \--

\--

The sky remains overcast today.

  
  


Maru and Moro both chirp 'good morning’ at him, giggling with bright eyes. It's nice to see the two of them this lively, even so early in the morning, and Kimihiro gives them both a smile before pressing a tender kiss to each of their foreheads. 

  
  


He had seen Yuuko do the same for them before, and now that she's—

  
  


Now, Kimihiro does this for Maru and Moro, every single day without fail. He lets them sleep next to him at night because neither of them are used to sleeping by themselves, and he kisses their foreheads in the morning because they refuse to get up otherwise.

  
  


It's all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping.

  
  


When he's ushered Maru and Moro out of his room, and he's changed out of his bedclothes, he breathes in and counts to ten.

  
  


Sliding the door open, he gets ready to start the day.

  
  


\--

  
  


The sky remains overcast today.

  
  


Doumeki arrives before noon, bearing gifts from Kohane and Himawari as well as groceries and books for Kimihiro to read. 

  
  


"I want to eat sukiyaki," Doumeki states even before Kimihiro has the chance to look into the grocery bags.

  
  


"I'm assuming you brought the ingredients for that particular dish?" Kimihiro asks, eyebrows raised and arms folded over his chest. His visitor holds up the bags wordlessly, which in Doumeki-speak, means that yes, all the ingredients needed to make sukiyaki are in there. 

  
  


"I also brought sake," Doumeki says, motioning to the bottle inside the other bag.

  
  


Sighing, Kimihiro takes the bags from him and gracefully avoids getting stepped on by Mokona, who Kimihiro believes can be summoned by the sheer mention of a home-cooked meal and an expensive bottle of alcohol.

  
  


Yuuko was the same. She seemed to have a sixth sense for whenever Kimihiro planned to cook a tasty meal or whenever guests brought over alcohol. Kimihiro expects her to pop out from the hallway to whine at him. Something along the lines of “ _Start cooking, I'm hungry_ ” and “ _Bring out the glasses, Watanuki, we're getting drunk today!”_

  
  


But of course, she doesn't appear. 

  
  


Kimihiro lingers for a few more moments in the hallway before he calls for Maru and Moro to set the table and disappears into the kitchen.

  
  


It's all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping.

  
  


As he begins cooking, he can't help but notice how deafeningly silent the kitchen is without anyone constantly hovering over his shoulder and asking if the dish is ready.

  
  


\- 

  
  


Doumeki leaves before sunset. 

  
  


It's understandable that he doesn't stay any later. Kimihiro always sends him away before nightfall, not wanting the other man to be too tired when he goes to work the following day. 

  
  


Sometimes, Kimihiro finds it hard to reconcile the Doumeki he knew from high school—the one he had a one-sided rivalry with—to this Doumeki who is currently a respectable professor at an equally respectable university.

  
  


So, whenever Doumeki drops by, looking older and more mature while he badgers him for a meal in his unique way and shares a drink with him, Kimihiro is always made to realize two important things:

  
  


One, ten years have already passed since Kimihiro inherited the shop. The world has moved on, and the world will continue moving on.

  
  


Two, Kimihiro, whose existence is bound to the shop Yuuko once supervised, remains rooted in the same spot, unmoving and unchanging. 

  
  


Kimihiro remembers telling Doumeki over tea once, _"It must be hard to keep doing this for me."_

  
  


He had been referring to the fact that Doumeki had to constantly check on him, to provide him with basic necessities and the like as Kimihiro was unable to do so himself. 

  
  


Kimihiro bound himself to the shop willingly, knowing perfectly well and accepting that it was the price he had to pay to regain his ability to see spirits and to have the slimmest chance of seeing Yuuko again. However, he didn't expect to bind anybody else to him. 

  
  


(Kimihiro's time remained stationary while Doumeki's time still flowed like everybody else's, and yet here was Doumeki, spending four days out of seven in the shop with Kimihiro instead of living his life to the fullest.)

  
  


Doumeki, who had only begun his teaching career at that time, set down the papers he'd been correcting before regarding Kimihiro with an expression Kimihiro hadn't been able to decipher. Doumeki had cryptically replied to Kimihiro's statement with this, _"You've made your choice, and I've already made mine."_

  
  


Doumeki, now 27 instead of 17, will continue to age like Kohane and Himawari and everybody else in his life. Despite this, he still refuses to leave Kimihiro, who no longer exists in the same way as they do, alone. 

  
  


All of Kimihiro's friends choose to stubbornly remain by his side. They mold and build their lives around him, and certainly, that is not a small sacrifice to make. 

  
  


That fact makes Kimihiro feel a strange mixture of elation, relief, sorrow, and guilt—if those feelings could co-exist all together simultaneously. He can’t tell if he’s made the right choice by allowing Doumeki and the rest of his friends to remain by his side even when all of them are aware that their continued relationship with Kimihiro will only have one inevitable outcome. 

  
  


(Kimihiro, who no longer ages the way they do, will outlive all of them by many lonely centuries.) 

  
  


At times like these, Kimihiro yearns for Yuuko’s presence, for her guidance and wisdom. In his moments of uncertainty, Yuuko’s words had always helped ground and comfort him. 

  
  


But she is no longer in this shop with him, nor is she anywhere else in this world.

  
  


So, in response to his worry about whether or not he made the correct choice, Kimihiro imagines Yuuko telling him as she did once before, “ _One takes responsibility for one’s own choices, Watanuki, so if your friends decide to stay by your side and you choose to allow them to do that, both of you will simply have to take responsibility for the results that will come out of the respective choices that you made.”_

  
  


Kimihiro imagines her giving him a small smile—the kind of smile she puts on for him when she wants him to be at ease—before continuing, _“As long as neither of you regrets the outcome of your choices, then it’s all right.”_

  
  


Kimihiro has chosen to grant Yuuko’s one and only wish: for him to continue existing. He has chosen to believe that if he wishes hard enough, he will be able to see Yuuko again. He has chosen to exchange his mortality, manage the shop, and grant wishes until he finds a way to see the person he cherishes the most once more. All of his friends, on the other hand, have chosen to remain by his side for as long as time will permit them to. 

  
  


The outcomes of their respective choices, Kimihiro has come to realize, are neither good nor bad—they simply are. Kimihiro doesn’t regret his own, and he hopes with all of his heart that the rest of his friends do not regret the choices that they made, too. 

  
  


(Kimihiro doesn’t regret his choices—it’s just that, sometimes, sometimes he wishes he never had to make them in the first place.)

  
  


\--

  
  


The sky remains overcast today.

  
  


The customer in front of Kimihiro is bewildered, eyes darting around the receiving area with curiosity and a hint of distrust. It almost makes Kimihiro chuckle out loud; he remembers reacting the same way when he was first pulled into the shop.

“You mentioned that this shop can grant wishes?” the customer asks while Kimihiro sets the tea down on the table. 

  
Kimihiro smiles at the customer politely. “You are correct,” he replies, “for an equivalent price, I will grant you your wish.”

  
  


“I don’t have a wish,” the customer informs him quickly, evasively, “I entered this shop by accident.”

  
  


Shaking his head, Kimihiro motions for the customer to drink the tea he had prepared. “Honored customer, the fact that you found this shop means that you have a wish,” Kimihiro explains, “you would not have been drawn to the shop otherwise.”

  
  


The customer looks at Kimihiro, confused. “What do you mean?”

  
  


Kimihiro’s smile grows. “You finding and entering this shop wasn’t an accident,” he tells the customer calmly, “it was _hitsuzen_.”

  
  


As the customer’s eyes widen at his words, Kimihiro cannot help but be filled with sad nostalgia. “ _There are no coincidences in this world,”_ Yuuko had said with a wise smile, “ _there is only hitsuzen.”_

  
  


And Kimihiro has come to accept that it was _hitsuzen_ that was at work —from the very first moment Kimihiro caught sight of the shop to his first meeting with Yuuko and everybody else that he met while working for her. All of those encounters and the events that followed them were the work of _hitsuzen_ —of the inevitable.

  
  


“So, honored customer,” Kimihiro says after a few quiet moments, “what is your wish?”

  
  


After staring at him for a good minute, the customer hesitantly gives Kimihiro a reply. He listens to the customer’s wish, carefully deliberating the price the customer must pay in order for the wish to be granted. 

  
  


_“For every wish that one makes, one pays an equivalent price in order to realize that wish,”_ Yuuko had told him before in a soft but serious tone, “ _the price you pay cannot be more than the equivalent of your wish, but it also cannot be less. It must be a balanced exchange, or else there will be chaos.”_

  
  


When Kimihiro first granted wishes in Yuuko’s place, he had either overcharged or undercharged his customers, and as a consequence, his body suffered severely. He had been in pain after every transaction, and became more or less immobile on the next few days. This had worried his friends immensely, and they all begged Kimihiro to take better care of himself. The Kimihiro of before wouldn’t have listened, wouldn’t have taken his friends’ worry to heart and simply continued to grant each and every wish without a single thought to himself because that Kimihiro had never considered himself to be important.

  
  


(Selflessness, when overdone, can also become a form of selfishness that hurts those around you. It hadn’t been an easy lesson to learn but ultimately a necessary one. Kimihiro had been selfless in the most selfish ways possible, and he had inadvertently caused pain to the ones who loved him.)

  
  


Kimihiro has changed a lot since then. He had promised them that he’ll take better care of himself so he won’t get hurt anymore. He already knew by then how much it broke his friends’ hearts whenever they hear that he has gotten hurt. While the Kimihiro of before had a difficult time wrapping his head around the idea that there were people who genuinely cared about his well-being, Yuuko—and everyone else he had met through her—had helped change that mindset. Just as Kimihiro gets hurt whenever people dear to him get hurt, the people who consider him important also get hurt whenever he gets hurt. 

  
  


If he had never met Yuuko, Kimihiro would have never been able to change. If he had never met Yuuko, Kimihiro would have never been able to meet all the wonderful people he has in his life now. 

  
  


(If he had never met Yuuko, Kimihiro would have never been able to learn what it means to have someone so unbearably dear to him.)

The customer leaves after Kimihiro grants him his wish and accepts the corresponding payment. He’s gotten better at granting wishes and asking for an equal payment, and his mistakes are few and far in between nowadays. Kimihiro never thought the day would come when he would succeed Yuuko, but life—but _hitsuzen_ —had always worked in mysterious and unexpected ways.

  
  


_But oh, how bittersweet,_ Kimihiro thinks to himself as he sits down on the porch, lighting Yuuko’s _kiseru_ —his, now—and inhaling. _How bittersweet that it was hitsuzen that brought me to you, Yuuko-san, and yet it was also hitsuzen that led to our separation._

  
  


Kimihiro exhales, watching the small puffs of smoke swirl in front of him before disappearing.

  
  


It's all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping.

  
  


It’s just that sometimes, sometimes he wishes he knew what to do to ease the unending longing in his heart.

  
  


\--

  
  


The sky remains overcast today.

  
  


Kimihiro spends the day sewing and altering kimonos—Yuuko’s old kimonos—so he’ll be able to wear them. He’s always been good at housework, so it’s not a very difficult task to do.

  
  


(Inheriting the shop meant that Kimihiro also inherited everything that Yuuko once owned—her kimonos, her sake cups, her _kiseru_ —and using these objects made Kimihiro feel closer to her. He did everything in his power to keep her memory alive because if there was anything Kimihiro was deathly afraid of, it was forgetting Yuuko. He had witnessed it once before—when Yuuko’s frozen time moved forward, all recollections her previous clients had of her disappeared and it had filled him with unspeakable fear.

  
  


(What a frightening thought it is to forget Yuuko, the person who changed his life, the person who is so, so unbearably dear to Kimihiro, the person Kimihiro loves in all the ways one is able to love.) 

  
  


After he’s finished the alterations, he slips the kimono on. For a while, Kimihiro allows himself to imagine that the warmth emanating from the fabric is of Yuuko’s. He kisses the sleeve of the kimono reverently and longs to do the same to her elegant wrist.

  
  


It’s all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping.

  
  


It’s just that sometimes, sometimes he wishes that it wasn’t necessary to do so.

  
  


\--

  
  


The sky remains overcast today.

  
  


The sun is about to set, and yet the sky maintains its monochromatic hue when Kimihiro gazes at it. It’s strange now that he’s taken notice of it, how the days have consistently been overcast since he’s become the successor of the shop. 

  
  


(Ever since Yuuko had gone.)

  
  


_Grief,_ Kimihiro thinks, _steals the colors from the sky and hides them away where no one can see them_.

  
  


Bringing the sake cup to his lips and taking a sip, Kimihiro lets the bittersweet taste of alcohol settle in his mouth before swallowing.

  
  


He lets a small, sad smile curve up his lips. “Yuuko-san, I’d like to see the vibrant colors of the sky again one day,” Kimihiro whispers to the ghost of a warm memory he keeps close to his heart. “I’d like to see them again one day, together with you.”

  
  


There is no one who replies to his sentiment. The silence only adds to his yearning. 

  
  


But, it’s all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping. It might be difficult some days, but Kimihiro is stubborn and resilient. Yuuko had once told him that if a person wishes strongly enough, their wish will definitely be granted. Up to this day, Kimihiro holds on to that belief firmly.

  
  


(He’s made a wish to see Yuuko again one day, and he’s going to wait as long as it takes for that wish to be granted.)

  
  


So, it’s all right. Kimihiro is learning. Kimihiro is coping.

  
  


Until the day his wish is granted, he will remain in this shop, patiently waiting for Yuuko’s return so that he’ll be able to properly welcome her back.

  
  


And when that day comes—the sky will no longer be overcast.

  
  


\-- 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for taking the time to read this fic and I hope that you enjoyed! Please tell me what you think!
> 
> Have a good day!


End file.
